1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for simultaneously executing a multi-participant application in a plurality of terminals.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, game server and client-type multi-participant applications have become popular. Such applications allow multiple users to participate simultaneously via a network. A typical example of a multi-participant application is a multi-participant online game. A multi-participant online game may be played by several hundred to several thousand users simultaneously.
In a multi-participant online game, each user accesses a game server that provides a game, from a terminal such as his/her personal computer or game machine. The game server encodes and manages information relating to the game which is played with the terminal maintaining a connected state to the game server. This information includes characters manipulated by users, monsters that are enemies of the characters, and landscapes that are backgrounds in the game. Each terminal receives this information from the game server, and performs processing such as rendition processing to render the characters, monsters, and the like. With multi-participant applications that have this form, a plurality of users share one world in a virtual space provided by the game server, and the characters manipulated by the users can converse or exchange items relating to the games with each other. Furthermore, characters in the game can form groups with each other and act together in the virtual space. Although the main purpose of forming a group and acting together with other characters is to more easily reach goals in the game that would be difficult to reach individually, another purpose of forming of groups is to enjoy communication with other group members.
The game server for a multi-participant online game must perform an enormous amount of processing in order to manage dynamic information relating to the contents of operations and the like of multiple users. One way of lightening the load for such processing is distributed computing, and one technique that has been proposed is parallel computing whereby a plurality of computers connected in parallel execute a common application.